Firefighters Top Gallup's "Honesty and Ethics" List

Nurses and members of military close behind

by David W. Moore

GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks
in the United States, firefighters and other rescue personnel have
been widely praised for their heroics as they risked their lives to
save others caught in the devastation of the attacks. The annual
CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll ranking of the honesty and ethics of
professions reflects this respect, as firefighters rank first among
people of different professions for their honesty and integrity,
with 90% of Americans rating them "high" or "very high" on these
characteristics.

Close behind in the ratings are nurses and members of the
military, with more than eight in 10 Americans giving them high
ratings on their honesty and ethics. The police, pharmacists,
medical doctors and the clergy are bunched together in fourth
place, with about two-thirds of Americans giving each group a high
rating. More than half of Americans also give high ratings to
engineers, college teachers and dentists.

Please tell me how you would rate the honesty
and ethical standards of people in these different fields -- very
high, high, average, low, or very low?% Saying "very high" or "high"

November 26-27, 2001

Please tell me how you would rate the honesty
and ethical standards of people in these different fields -- very
high, high, average, low, or very low?% Saying "very high" or "high"

November 26-27, 2001

At the lowest end of the scale are car salesmen, the only group
given a low or very low rating on honesty and ethics by a majority
of Americans. Other groups receiving low ratings from at least
three of 10 Americans are lawyers, insurance salesmen and labor
union leaders.

Pharmacists vs. the Clergy and Police

The annual Gallup Poll rating of professions was conducted this
year on Nov. 26-27. This is the first year when Americans were
asked to rate firefighters and members of the military, and only
the third year nurses were rated. Nurses came in first the past two
years, given high ratings by 73% and 79% of Americans in each of
the respective years. They supplanted the longest-winning group,
pharmacists, who had come in first every year from 1988 to 1998. In
1981, 1983 and 1985, the clergy edged out the pharmacists by a few
percentage points, but starting in 1988 -- in the wake of several
scandals involving televangelists -- ratings for the clergy fell
several percentage points. For the next decade, an average of about
65% of Americans each year rated pharmacists as high on honesty and
ethics, compared with an average of about 56% for the clergy. In
the latest poll, pharmacists still outrank the clergy, but by a
somewhat narrower margin of 68% to 64%.

The police have experienced an improvement in their ratings in
the past several years. In 1995, the year of the O.J. Simpson
trial, only 41% gave the police a high rating, the lowest rating in
a decade. The following year the percentage jumped to 49%, and by
last year it had climbed to 55%, the highest ever. This year, 68%
of Americans give the police high ratings on their honesty and
ethics, the largest jump of any group measured in both years. The
increase is no doubt related to the general "rally effect" for the
uniformed services following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Two professions that did well last year but were not included
this year (they are scheduled for inclusion next year) are
veterinarians and grade school/high school teachers, each given
high ratings by more than six in 10 Americans in 2000. In the past
two years, the grade school and high school teachers outranked
college teachers by an average of four percentage points.

Car Salesmen

Of the 23 groups rated in the poll, 13 receive high or very high
ratings from less than half the public. However, for 12 of these 13
groups, most of the ratings that are not "high" are nevertheless
"average" -- so that all but one group are rated "average" or
better by a majority of the public. Fifty-two percent of Americans
rate car salesmen either "low" (39%) or "very low" (13%) on honesty
and ethics, the largest number by far for any group.

The results reported here are based on telephone interviews with
a randomly selected national sample of 1,005 adults, 18 years and
older, conducted Nov. 26-27, 2001. For results based on this
sample, one can say with 95 percent confidence that the maximum
error attributable to sampling and other random effects is plus or
minus 3 percentage points. In addition to sampling error, question
wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can
introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion
polls.

Please tell me how you would rate the honesty and ethical
standards of people in these different fields -- very high, high,
average, low, or very low? First, ... Next, ...[RANDOM
ORDER]

The effects of scandals in the business world and the Roman Catholic Church are apparent in Gallup's annual update of the public's ratings of the honesty and ethics of professions. Business executives, accountants, and stockbrokers are all rated lower than last year and lower than their historical averages. Ratings of the clergy took a significant hit this year as well, falling from 64% to a historical low of 52%. Nurses are once again the most highly rated profession, while telemarketers and car salesmen are at the bottom of the honesty and ethics scale.

It's no secret that qualified nurses are in short supply. Healthcare executives have been actively recruiting nurses worldwide, but considering the profession's high turnover rate, retention efforts are just as important. Gallup's research indicates good managers are the lynchpins to retention.